MongoDB account -- is it an administrator's account?

Question

I'm more familiar with MySQL, but in my new workplace, I have to look after a MongoDB database (MongoDB 4.2.18 with Mongosh 1.1.9 running on Ubuntu 18.04.6 -- yes, it's old; upgrading is a problem for another day). I don't know anything about MongoDB. Unfortunately, the person who created it has left and left behind no documentation. Now, I need to look after it.

What I have is a username and a password. With that, I can login like so:

mongosh --port 27017 --authenticationDatabase "admin" -u "XXX" -p

I can list all of the databases by doing show databases. But, I can't execute the command show users:

admin> show users
MongoServerError: not authorized on admin to execute command { usersInfo: 1, lsid: { id: UUID("b2c4e061-1b54-4b27-bdf2-bef330b38b4d") }, $db: "admin" }

I then tried to get a list of users. And I think this is the command to do it:

admin> show collections
system.users
system.version
admin> db.system.users.find().pretty ()
MongoServerError: not authorized on admin to execute command { find: "system.users", filter: {}, lsid: { id: UUID("1801ce09-5c09-44eb-9b04-86eb35817eaa") }, $db: "admin" }

Together, this feels like my account isn't an administrator's account. Would this be correct?

If so, is it possible to create a new account with full administator's privileges? I have sudo access on the host machine. If so, how would I do that?

Thank you!

Answer 1

Edit your configuration file (typically /etc/mongod.conf) to this

security:
   authorization: disabled

As precaution in order to prevent unauthorized connections, you may also set

net:
   port: 55555
   bindIp: localhost

Then restart the mongod service. Now, you can connect with

mongosh --port 55555

and you have all privileges on the database. Change the password and/or credentials of user XXX or create a new admin user. You can check existing credential usersInfo command.

db.getSiblingDB('admin').runCommand(
   {
     createUser: "administrator",
     pwd: "secret"
     roles: [
       { role: "root", db: "admin" }
     ]
   }
)

Revert configuration changes and restart mongod again.

Answer 2

Yes it's administrator account... You just need to change to admin DB, where user information is. So, type "use admin" + enter. You can always check on what DB you are just type "db" + enter.

With your mongodump problem. Parameters --db= and/or --authenticationDatabase= will solve your problem (depending your problem). Use mongodump --help

What to come to question how to see if your role is admin, use db.getUser("admin"). Check here!